


of jelly tarts and places to call home

by mayathewriter



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Found Family, Gen, Power of Friendship, Written Pre-Show, did not end up being an angst prompt lmao, mostly canon compliant anyways lmao, theyre just. talking. lmao., was supposed to be an angst prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 00:11:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15740139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayathewriter/pseuds/mayathewriter
Summary: Out of everything at the castle, Rayla really didn’t think the prince would be missingsweets, of all things.





	of jelly tarts and places to call home

Out of everything at the castle, Rayla really didn’t think the prince would be missing _sweets_ , of all things. She assumed he would miss sleeping indoors, having servants, safety, maybe. Not jelly tarts.

(Sometimes, when he’s talking to his brother and Rayla is alone, she lets herself regret not taking the one he offered her. She squashes the voice down, deep in her heart where his bright, innocent smile can’t reach.)

Usually it’s just complaints as they walk, saying he missed the sweets. How, apparently, he had a legendary sweet tooth that the whole kitchen staff feared. Callum vouched for that, smiling fondly at his younger brother and nudging him into a game of tag or hide-and-seek, pulling his mind far from his worries the way only older siblings could.

(She wondered how he learned to care for the boy who so clearly didn’t share his blood, how they learned to be brothers despite the missing link that had always been so crucial back home. Back home, where blood meant everything, and betraying blood was a worse fate than death.)

When it gets really bad, and Ezran is sitting alone, curled up on himself with his shoulders shaking silently, Callum is the one to comfort him and calm him down. Except now, it’s just Rayla, and the remaining soft spot in her heart was aching when she saw him cry, unsure exactly what to do but knowing she couldn’t just sit and watch.

(He wasn’t much older than she was when she left to train to be an assassin. She was the fastest and the strongest, but her still-soft heart hurt as much as the weakest on her first night alone. There was nobody for her then, just Runaan telling her that she needed to get up, that she needed to be quiet, that assassins didn’t cry.)

She walked, footsteps silent as to not disturb the stillness surrounding their camp, and sat next to him, careful to not startle him. Ezran sniffed, looking up at her with puffy red eyes and skin ruddy and blotched. “Why are you crying?” she asked. She knew the answer, but thought maybe, if she could get him talking, she could help somehow.

“I miss jelly tarts,” he mumbled, voice thick with tears. Jelly tarts. Rayla still didn’t understand how they were worth crying for, not when there was so much else that could be wrong, but in that moment he looked so small, so young, and she could feel the her heart softening just a little more.

“What do you miss about them?”

“I- I miss-” he sniffed again, wiping at his eyes. “I miss making them with the kitchen ladies, and sneaking into my dad’s office to give one to Pip before giving my dad his, and he would pretend to be upset before laughing and splitting his, giving me half and Pip the other. I miss finding Soren and giving him _three_ , because he’s a member of the Royal Crownguard and teaches Callum the sword so he needs more, then him chasing me around the grounds because he’s still hungry. He can run _really_ fast, but I win anyways. After I would give Claudia as many as she wanted, and she would let me play with her magic dogs,” his voice had turned wistful and giggly, hands flapping as he talked, the sadness morphing into something fond as he thought about the castle. “They’re really cute. After I would find Callum and we would split the rest with Bait.”

Said glow toad slept next to them, and Ezran’s face fell as he finished talking, remembering where he was.

“I miss home.”

(It was never really about the jelly tarts. Home was a word Rayla thought she knew, but was learning more and more about when she listened to the princes. To Rayla, home was a small room she was allowed to call her own. In all their stories, neither prince had mentioned the castle, but rather the people in it.)

“You’ll be back soon,” she tried, but the words felt fake coming off her tongue, too false to be plausible.

“No I won’t,” he said simply, voice too somber for a ten-year-old. “What do you miss about your home?”

The question is startling, and her first thought is that she doesn’t _have_ a home, not the same way he does. But she swallows the words down, voice soft as she told stories of her mother and father and brothers and sisters, the family she never had enough time to know and the home she never got the chance to live in.

It helped, in a roundabout sort of way. She felt more at peace with what happened to her than she had in a long time, and seemed to soothe Ezran as well. So when he fell asleep on her shoulder, she adjusted slightly so his head was pillowed on her legs, hair soft and fluffy against her arms.

(Rayla didn’t have a home she loved the way that the two young princes loved theirs. But maybe, just maybe, she could build a new one that they would love all the same, made of campfires and dragon eggs and adventures.)

**Author's Note:**

> so this wasn't edited bc i have school tomorrow, so if there's any glaringly large errors please let me know! hope you enjoyed!


End file.
